Interview with Red O’Laughlin

Hey everyone! What’s up? This is Shan Naqvi the host of “ShanPreneur”. Today we have Red O’Laughlin as a guest. He is Author, writer, book strategist, personal publisher. Former aviator and military officer. Married for 50 years, has two children and three grandchildren. Visited 60 countries in the world. Walked all 500 miles of the Camino de Santiago with his wife less than two years ago. Let’s talk to him and learn more about him!

Sir. Red O’Laughin, I am so excited to interview you…before getting started, I would like to ask: Tell us something about yourself? And about your work? We’d love to know about you more.

I am the oldest of nine children. My father was in the military and my mother was a housewife. Somewhere around the seventh grade, I would come home and make dinner. My mother was working as a secretary at that time. A typical meal might be a dozen plus hamburgers, a dozen and a half pork chops, etc. I love to cook. I was the first in my family to graduate from college (Texas A&I University). My degree was chemistry. I got an invitation to go to Vietnam before I could practice anything in the chemical field.

My father was a pilot for eighteen years. I chose to go into the aviation field because of him. I was always number one in my class and had choices of where my next duty station would be. I chose Patrol aircraft in Hawaii when I entered and that is exactly what I got when I earned my Naval Flight Officer wings.

Enroute to Hawaii, my daughter was born. Just before leaving Hawaii, my son was born. My family spent three years living in Hawaii. I spent about half that time away from home on various deployments overseas.

I got out of the Navy after four plus years and joined the Naval Reserves. I flew the same missions in the same type of aircraft (P3 Orion). We lived in California for six years. I earned an A.A. degree from DeAnza College in Quality Assurance. Immediately after that I enrolled at University of Southern California is their Masters of Science degree program in Systems Management. I began teaching statistics at DeAnza College while going to and extention program of USC in the Bay area of California.

While in California, I worked for National Semiconductor and Memorex in various quality assurance/engineering positions.

We move to Texas in the late 70s. I worked for Wordstream as a reliability engineer. I worked there nearly a year and the company folded up business in Texas and let everyone go. The oil industry was beginning to downslide. I took a chance and was QA manager for Dresser Magcobar. That lasted a couple of years and I affiliated with NL McCullough, again, in the QA field.

I worked on a PhD in International Business and finished all but three classes and my dissertation. After moving to New Orleans I was unable to complete the program. I petitioned the university and received an M.B.A. degree for the work I had already completed.

I was picked up by the Reserves in New Orleans and flew with them until 1986. The oil industry tanked in the mid-80’s and many, many people lost their jobs, myself included. I found a job working initially in the reliability engineering field and then in logistics with the U. S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I worked for Boeing Petroleum Services and ended up as the head Logistics manager for the contractor. When Boeing’s contract expired, they did not renew.

I then had an opportunity to go back on active duty with the Reserves. I spent two years in the New York City area, two years in the San Francisco area and my final two years was spent in Stuttgart, Germany. My last military position was Deputy Director of Reserve Affairs for European Command. I had oversight responsibility for over 5500 Reservists in 89 countries in Europe and Africa. During the last six years on active duty, I completed the Naval War College.

I retired from the Navy in 1999 with over 31 years of service. My final rank was Captain. While in the Navy, I was fortunate to travel to 60 countries in the world.

We had moved to New Orleans in 1987. When I went on active duty with the military, my family returned to our home in Texas. I was picked up by Halliburton and worked there for several years before they decided I needed early retirement. During my civilian career, I earned seven professional certifications. After Halliburton, I decided to work for myself rather than for another company. I formed MRO Global, LLC. I have been working for myself for over ten years.

Tell us something about your book “Longevity Secrets”, What will we get in that book?

Longevity Secrets discusses the two major causes of aging. It goes into detail as to what you can do to accelerate or decelerate your aging processes. I also discussed brain and heart health as well. As we age, many processes in our bodies degrade. It is possible to maintain many of them at near peak efficiency. You might be doing three or four things right and ten or more things wrong. If you don’t know, how can you make changes in your life.

Aging is coming whether you want it to or not. There are quite a few things that anyone can do to make a significant improvement in the elder years.

You have an MBA from the University of Houston, a B. S. in Chemistry from Texas A&I, an M. S. in Systems Management from the University of Southern California, and a lot of other degrees! Why you choose to become a speaker about health and wellness? What made you realize that’s a perfect job for you?

I’ve been a public speaker for decades. I’ve taught classes in academia, the military, and for all the companies that I’ve worked for. Concurrently, I’ve written over a thousand procedures. I joined Toastmasters to improve my speaking ability and earned the Distinguished Toastmaster designation from them in three years.

Owning your own business allows a lot of flexibility. As a speaker, I can provide information to many forums. This past week I’ve spoken to a networking group. Next week I’m the featured speaker at a Rotary Club meeting. The week after that I’ll be speaking to an entrepreneurial group. My topics are typically on health and wellness. However, I might also talk on the subconscious mind or on writing, publishing and/or travel. As a published author, it adds credibility to my speaking role.

I earned my B. S. in Chemistry and immediately received an invitation to go to Vietnam. By the time the war was over and I returned to the United States, I didn’t have the continuity in chemistry to be competitive. Because of my leadership roles as an officer in the military, I moved immediately into various supervisory and managerial roles with my civilian employers.

I use my chemistry degree today to research what happens in the human body at the cellular level. I look for cause and effect relationships. If you treat a symptom, you will always treat a symptom. You must treat a cause to get rid of a problem – health related or not. As such, I offer my audience a different perspective from the typical health and wellness writer. The ‘cause and effect’ niche is not discussed often in books.

I’ve written four books and co-authored another. I learned a lot about publishing by doing everything myself. For the past year I’ve been working with new authors to strategize exactly what they want when they write their first book. I also take control of the publishing aspect of their book(s).

Longevity Secrets is roughly 60,000 words. I wrote it in 30 days. It took seven months to edit. I realized that editing is the key time constraint after the book is written. I’ve developed and refined a process by which you can write you book in two days and have it published within a week. That is the business that I’m expanding nowadays.

I love helping people, whether it be through my speaking, writing or publishing. I had a recent client this year who spent ten years writing a book based on a friendly fire incident that occurred in 1969 in Vietnam and was covered up by the United States. It took less than two weeks to have his book published.

Would you say something about self-improvement? Should we improve ourselves?

I believe everyone should improve themselves. I cannot imagine a valid reason for not doing so. I spent most of my life improving my skills for the companies I worked for. It wasn’t until after I was in business for myself that I realized that most of what I had learned in civilian (and military) employment did not apply to the entrepreneur.

I started reading about self-improvement. I read a book a week for over three years. The first book I wrote and published is called No Matter What You Can Do It. I would speak across the United States on my mentor’s stage and sell my books and CDs in the back of the room.

The saying, if you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always gotten. When we are young, this might be OK. But, when we are entering retirement, we need more. Inflation and other factors will eat away at any nest egg you have. If you don’t have newer skills and the need to succeed, you will be living a marginal life. Yes, I believe everyone of us should seek to be better. When we are better, we can help others get better in their lives.

In today’s generation, guys are really insecure! The negative people are around us, they might be your brother or your cousin or anyone? What would you say about the fear of crowds?

My mentor used to answer the question, “How are you?” with “Excellent, as always!” I’ve been doing that for nearly a decade. I am always positive. I avoid those who are not. Even on those one or two days a year that I don’t feel ‘excellent’, I find that just reponding like that improves my mental attitude. It’s not long before the mental or physical distraction is gone.

One of the first rules about managing stress is to remove the stress or remove yourself from the setting. We are the average of the five closest friends we hand out with all the time. There are times in our lives that we need to leave some baggage behind and seek new and better friendships.

As a baby boomer, I can’t speak for the feelings of millenials. Insecurity should be temporary. We are in control of our lives. Sometimes it might take you months or years to change your baseline and begin living a better life. It all begins with knowing what you want, developing a plan to get there, and executing that plan – making adjustments as you learn lessons from your mistakes and failures.

Fear of crowds is a rational fear. My wife doesn’t like crowds. It is relatively easy to avoid for most people. I can remember entering subways and trains around the world and people are literally packed in like sardines. It doesn’t bother me. But, my wife has a problem with it. I’m not sure I can offer specific advice. My go-to answer is to use Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and begin building a new mindset on a daily basis.

What is important to starting out anything?

We are all individuals with strengths and weaknesses. My first response is to improve your strengths. They are easier to improve than our weaknesses. “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there!” Alice in Wonderland was given that advice.

I believe we need to have our mindset aligned with our plans. If we are deficient in some skill required to get to the next level of our life, then we need more education. I realized late last year that I lack a lot of entrepreneurial education. I’ve owned a business for years, but I don’t know what I don’t know. I started going back to a local junior college learning what I should have learned years ago. It’s never too late to learn more. And, today, a lot of it is free on the Internet, and, especially on YouTube. I use YouTube a lot.

Any motivation for those people who consider themselves ugly?

Dr. Maxwell Maltz wrote Psychocybernetics in 1960. As a cosmetic surgeon he witnessed many people seeing themselves before and after surgery and liking their improved faces. However, there was a small percentage of patients who did not see the beauty when it was obvious to everyone else. Their subconscious mind did not allow them to see the transition.
Self image and self-esteem are difficult things to break through. It is not something that you typically conquer yourself. As I mentioned already, we all have strengths and weaknesses. Improvement in our strengths should cancel out a lot of negative self-thoughts.

Motivation is intrinsic. We motivate ourselves. Someone cannot pay you’re a thousand dollars and tell you to get motivated and stay that way. Each of us has our own value system. We need to figure out what is important and begin doing those things.

Find a motivational speaker or writer and study his or her recommendations. TEDx talks are a great way to see world-class speakers talking on this and related topics.

I am inspired by your writing! Your thoughts are amazing? Any advice on that?

You are very kind. Thank you. I’m not sure what advice I can offer on such a broad topic. Psycho Cybernetics was the first self-improvement book I read. The more you know about controlling your subconscious mind, the better person you will become.

Most of us don’t know what we want to do in our lives. We don’t have a purpose. I would recommend finding why you are here on this earth? What purpose are you serving? When you know your purpose, you can plan and align yourself towards the things in that direction.

The biggest hindrance in your life will be your subconscious mind. You control your subconscious mind and you control your life.

Highly intelligent (I see that in the questions you choose to ask). Patient (I see that in your dealings with me to complete the questionnaire). Intrepid (You are venturing out to people you don’t know other than what they have written and ask them to help you in your project). Helpful (I see that in what you are trying to accomplish – others will be better off for what you are doing).

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